


In My Soul and Conscience

by Anonymous



Category: Becket
Genre: M/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-10
Updated: 2009-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They went to the whorehouses together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In My Soul and Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> For Lyra Sena in the Yuletide New Year's Resolution challenge. Italicized phrases excerpted from Jean Anouilh's _Becket_.

They went to the whorehouses together.

He could trust Thomas to watch his back in the whorehouses; better than he knew, he could trust Thomas to watch his back (_the beast with two backs_) in the whorehouses; he offered to guard the door while Thomas took his pleasure.

"No, my prince," Thomas said, and looked away. "It is not what I wish."

He did not ask what Thomas wished; whether because he did not care or did not want to know, Thomas did not ask, and the King was thankful for it, grateful; and he did not enjoy feeling gratitude to an Saxon, even one so devoted to himself as Thomas indubitably was.

Kings don't have to do what they don't want to; kings don't have to care about people, merely the realm and the reign. They don't have to know what they don't want to know, at least not about people, and Thomas taught him quite enough; Thomas, with his head always thinking, always humming and buzzing with thought, like a hive of bees in the height of summer, was a better tutor than any Henry had had as a child (_surrounded by fools and the only intelligent man in my kingdom is against me_).

"Come, Thomas," he said. "A fine morning."

"It will rain before nightfall, my lord," Thomas said.

"It is not yet nightfall," he said, "Come." Thomas inclined his head and left his philosophy (_he's read books, you know. it's amazing the amount he knows_). "I have a fancy to go riding, what say you, Thomas?"

"You are the King," Thomas said. "Am I to refuse you?"

"You would, quick enough if you thought it your duty," Henry said over his shoulder as he strode down the corridor, ignoring the guards who bowed as he passed. He could hear, faintly, Thomas's light step (_attractive, that little upturned toe, don't you think? quite full of unction and compunction_) on the cold stone. "I have enough people who obey me," he said cheerfully. "You're my friend, Thomas. Don't forget it."

"Never, my prince," Thomas said, and fell into step beside him (_marvelous to think of your mother following him to London with you inside her_).

Thomas would not pray with him at Mass. He had his duties, on occasion, as deacon, and when he did not, he refused to sit with Henry near the altar. The day Henry had determined to drag him in by the scruff of the neck, if necessary, he had simply not been in his chambers; he had taken Gwendolen and left the palace, leaving no orders.

He had ordered luncheon but wasn't there when it came; the King ate it. He lingered in Thomas's chambers as long as he could, and when he left, he drew the door shut behind himself, absurdly worried that Thomas would find him sneaking around (_what looks like morality in you is nothing more than esthetics_).

"Where were you?" he demanded the next day.

"Elsewhere, my lord. I was worshipping in my own fashion," Thomas said, and the King knew he would never be answered.

"I didn't know you thought the girl was a goddess, Thomas," he said mockingly, wiping his face with a towel. Chinon was an unhealthy place, and the king preferred it, for that reason -- his queen loathed the place.

"She is my mistress, my prince," Thomas said, picking up another towel and rubbing the King's arms with the rough cloth. Henry said nothing and leaned into the touch, the force of Thomas's hands; a strong man, for all that he was part of a conquered race.

"Come tonight to mass," he said, when Thomas had finished dressing him. (_come back tonight, my angel! I adore you! you have the prettiest eyes in the world!_)

"You need only to command it, my prince, and I shall be there," Thomas said.

"I don't want to command you, Thomas," he said irritably. He picked up his gloves and shook them out. "I want you to want to be with me." (_always have to tell them that, even when you pay for it, if you want real pleasure with them_)

"I am your servant, my prince," Thomas said, and turned away.

A king has nothing but servants. He rules his realm, and the realm is his, and all the people therein are his chattel, to do with as he pleases. He may throw them against the might of another king at his desire, and none may rebuke him.

Sometimes a king wants someone who isn't a servant, but there's no one.

A king's sons are merely his legacy; no king ever knows his legacy (_take your royal vermin with you_). When he looks at his wife, he measures the weight of her disapproval as he laughs, against the weight of the dowry-bags. But the dowry was spent, years ago, and now he can measure it only in the men it paid for.

A third of her dowry for her own palace so he would have to see her as little as possible and she could sit and weave and embroider her everlasting, mediocre tapestry; two-thirds for war. War is expensive, in any terms one chooses: gold, horses, time, and men.

He can order his barons to provide him with men-at-arms, and they do. They obey him. Those men die; he sends them to France and then to hell. But they are his servants; and besides, he doesn't know them (_they're too numerous. one can't love them_), and he doesn't care to. They are his servants, his dogs, and he is defending the realm and the honour of the realm (_in all save the honour of God_).

He defends his realm alone.

He has his Saxon sheep which he can throw to the wolves as he chooses, and his Norman barons (_they've fallen asleep, the hogs. that's their way of showing their finer feelings_) bend the knee to him just as well. He can trust no one, love no one.

But Henry did.

Henry had a friend, or thought he did; Henry loved his friend _(no one on this earth has ever loved me except Becket_) and gave him everything he knew to give. Henry did what he could, hampered as he was; he was the King, and he was prepared to forgive, even to forget, many things, but never that.

He would not forget many things. He would not forget the sharp line of Thomas's jaw in the sunlight; nor the burn of the juniper gin; nor the scent of blood in the litter when Gwendolen died (_I don't like learning that people I know have died. I've a feeling it may give Death ideas_); nor the single gleaming lantern, like an eye, in the darkness of the chapel.

He would not forget that he had loved Thomas, and he would not forget that they had gone to the whorehouses together; he would not forget that they had made love side by side, had killed deer and boar in the same stroke, had drained more tankards than tupped women. He would not forget, but he would not think of it, either.

Kings cannot love.

(_O my Thomas_)


End file.
